Recently, we started a conversation about food and race. Specifically, we wondered out loud, who gets to cook — and become the face of — a culture’s cuisine?

[..] As with many things involving race and class in America, there are no easy answers — and we’re not expecting to find any clear-cut ones. We’re more interested in starting a conversation.

Here’s some of what we heard from you.

On one hand, many of you pointed out that cooking the cuisine of other cultures is a tangible way to connect. That’s part of what makes America a literal as well as figurative melting pot.

[..] At its heart, food is about identity — about where we came from — which is why the topic of cuisine and who cooks it can be so personal and complicated for some.

[..] Many of you stressed the importance of approaching the cuisine of others with respect. And that means highlighting not just the ingredients, but also the culture behind a dish.

Read the whole thing. The article is littered with numerous examples of narcissistic, self-obsessed, virtue-signalling statements sent in by NPR readers and listeners, each competing with one another to be the most enlightened, compassionate warrior fighting for those poor people whose very identity is being erased by the likes of Panda Express and Chipotle.

The upshot seems to be that a plurality of NPR listeners will very graciously allow us to continue cooking the food of other cultures, as long as we do so with sufficient respect and reverence for the culture from which we are borrowing.

But don’t you dare seek to make a profit on the back of a cuisine which is not identified with your personal ethnic background, because that is clearly a step too far:

Some of you said what’s bothersome isn’t so much whether a person of one race or ethnicity is cooking the food of another culture. That can be done respectfully. The question, then, is more about opportunity — who has a chance to profit from making a cuisine?

@NPRFood And is it OK that people perceive the food the white chef adopted as worth more than they would pay for the original?

The idea that the value of something should be determined by the consumer rather than some prissy Identity Politics oppression-based algorithm seems anathema to Twitter user Chandra Ram and a number of other NPR followers.

How long, then, until some virtue-signalling Identity Politics cultist proposes a system of “culinary reparations”, whereby restaurants are entitled to serve the modified cuisine of marginalised cultures only if they pay a some kind of tax on their revenue, to be distributed equally among everyone who can prove membership of the “injured” ethnic group?

And if you think something so ludicrous would never happen, just wait until the current crop of students passing through university have graduated, entered the job market and worked their way into our political system.

That’s the hipster food truck industry in London decimated, for a start.

Postscript: One of the best responses to the attempt by Identity Politics cultists to re-segregate our cuisines along ethnic lines comes from this Reddit user: